What were they thinking?

Riddle me this; assume that you are the worlds largest Operating System vendor. One of your core markets, and the one generating the profit that keeps your entire operations rolling in cash, is sales to businesses (and governments). You work in marketing and hired a research company to determine the impact if businesses were to upgrade to the latest version of your OS. When the results of the report come back, they reflect a strong negative impact. Do you:

a) Cram the report in a barrel and bury it with nuclear waste in Nevada
b) Forward the results to your boss and let him/her decide
c) Spin the results as a job creation benefit to the US economy

Apparently someone at Microsoft thought c) was a good idea and published a report concluding that Vista would create 100,000 new jobs in the USA and 50,000 more in Europe. Now, if you were in charge of keeping IT costs down in your organization and read this, how excited would you be about upgrading?

That’s almost as embarrassing as two Word exploits that let remote attackers hijack your entire PC, or having your development chief say, I would buy a Mac if I didn’t work for Microsoft, or getting caught stealing icons off your competitors web site.

Are Apple’s “picky” about RAM?

Scot Finnie, a “Windows Expert” wrote an article for Computerworld in which he describes his 3 month experiment using only a MacBook Pro. One of the comments he makes is,

I haven’t had a spontaneous reboot since the moment I pulled the [bad] RAM SIMM, the second day I had the machine. It’s been about six weeks. Apple computers are picky about RAM.

What surprised our dear friend Scot is that Apple hardware seems to care about the quality of RAM it is given. He is of course, correct. However, what he fails to note is that EVERY computer is quite finicky about RAM. Bad RAM will cause any Operating System running on any hardware to behave in undesirable ways.

During the legacy Mac OS days, when stability on Mac or Windows was not a thing to be depended upon, I remember joining a mailing list specific to BSD UNIX, which I was getting acquainted with. Another list member described a type of crash his system was experiencing. I thought it a bit presumptive when others pointed out his problem was almost certainly bad RAM. It was as if they were saying, “the problem is not our OS, it’s your hardware that is junk!” That scenario played out dozens more times during the years, as guys with only PC experience ventured into the land of UNIX where servers run for years and hardly ever crash.

The difference is one of perspective and requires a paradigm shift. Scot’s experience is one where frequent crashes are still commonplace. Now Scot has tasted a computing environment where six weeks, or six months without a reboot is common. It’s not that Apple computers are more picky about RAM. It is that you tend to notice when your system goes from rock solid dependable to sporadically crashing, which it had never done before. Scot, we welcome you to a brave new world.

PS: NewEgg has great prices, great service, and ample options for buying RAM for any computer.

Kayla is 18 months!

Adorable. Cute. Sassy. Fun.

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I’m sure she does not see the irony of her, with a head that measures off the charts (greater than 100th percentile), wearing my cap that says, “fatbrain.com.”

Totally scrumptious!

For all of you not married to a food-loving, systematic, engineer of a husband, you have my condolences.

Over the last month or so, my husband has methodically tested many pancake recipes in search of the ‘perfect’ pancake. And he has achieved it. He altered recipes one ingredient at a time to learn each ones affect on the overall finished good and now has come up with a totally scrumptious whole wheat banana buttermilk pancake. Fluffy, soft, moist and truly tasty!

Testers of course include Kayla who gives this version the big “mmmmmm” when she sees it come off the griddle. Matt treated me to a blueberry version of this pancake for breakfast recently (fruit infusion is my ultimate test) and I gave the finished product 5 stars.

Score one more for my husband and his determined approach to making something downright tasty!

compressed air is so passe

Every geek worth his salt is bound to get requests to fix aged and ailing computers. A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, dropped his ancient Dell off in the hopes that I could salvage some of the files off the disk. A few months ago it had crashed so he reinstalled the OS, and got a few more months use before it crashed really hard.

In such cases, I don’t even bother using the ancient computer. I just yank the disk and attach it to my computer using a FireWire ATA bridge. Then I can probe, test, and hopefully extract information from the disk. This is obviously much faster than working with a relic. This evening I pulled the unnamed person’s Dell out from under my desk and removed the lid. The greeting I got was a little unsavory.

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As the inside of computers go, this is not the worst I have seen. Most folks don’t bother to clean their engine before taking their car to a mechanic and they don’t bother to clean their computer before taking it to a technician. My intent in disassembly was simply to remove the drive, which you can see in the lower right hand side of the photo.

To remove the drive, there are two screws beneath the front panel that must be removed. I was thinking I could get the drive out without liberating too much of the dust, but I was wrong. Very wrong. When I partially removed the front cover, my wife, who happened to be watching the dissection, interrupted. With good cause, she insisted I put it back together and take it outside the clean it off.

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Other than age, can anyone at home guess why the drive failed?

I heeded Jen’s advice and took the computer out into the driveway to clean it out. I keep cans of compressed air in the garage for just this purpose. Then inspiration struck. I had just, in the previous 10 minutes, come down off the roof after blowing all the leaves out of my gutters. If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, I need not explain any further.

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and then they were four.

Before committing any impressions of dear little Lucas to print, I wanted some time to elapse. Words committed to print can take on a life of their own so I wanted the birthing dust to settle, external pressures to abate, and just feel a tad more normal before making proclamations.

We are now three and half weeks into Lucas’ life and much about this little man is clear. I find it easiest to explain via contrast. If you might recall, we commented profusely on how wonderful and easy to raise Kayla was. We received a number of baby books, and we bought a few more. We read them and created a synthesis of how we wanted to parent. Most everything we tried “just worked.”

It would have been easy to succumb to The Great Parenting Lie, that it was easy because we are such great parents. However, many a conversation with other parents had prepared us for what the future could hold. Now that that future is the present, the words of wisdom bestowed upon us are embodied in a mass of flesh that can best be described with a single word, needy.

Mind you, I am not complaining. We really do love this little destructor of our tranquility. By comparison to Kayla, there is little comparison. A typical feeding for Kayla was quite easy by most any standard; wake her, insert nipple (natural or synthetic), let her eat until satiated, burp her, keep her awake for an hour, swaddle her and put her back to sleep. Feedings could often be done in 30-45 minutes. Then we had that 1 1/2 hours of blissful peace and calm afterwards. Sweet blessed calm.

With Lucas, everything takes much longer. Waking him enough to eat is a 15 minute ordeal. So far the most successful technique is to uncover him and wait until he gets cold enough to stay awake. Feeding is sporadic, sometimes he eats well and at other times he fusses all the way through. He clings to his burps as if they are part of his dinner that we are trying to take away. Burping often takes 10 minutes.

He has caused us to use words in new ways. For example, we have seldom before farted something, but Lucas needs regular farting. When he wakes up crying at 3AM, we grab his legs and push them up to his chest and he breaks wind. We repeat the cycle and so does he. Sometimes a dozen times. Genetics predisposes him to having a highly active gastrointestinal system and his reticence to belch compounds the issue.

Warming him is best achieved with direct skin contact. Pick him up and hold him and he melts onto us. If it is the least bit chilly, he burrows in burying his head against our neck. We noticed his burrowing nature in the hospital. Even swaddled, he’d find a way to burrow down into his blankets. We could sell Lucas Technology[TM] to the military for use in heat seeking devices. During his warm up, he will invariably drift off to sleep. The problem is that he won’t stay asleep.

It is bitter irony. At 18 months, Kayla is in a stage where snuggling with her is vigorously protested. She is quite independent and has her very own conceptions of order in the universe. Lucas is simply carnal. It warms the heart. We enjoy our snuggle time. But all is not well in the land of snuggles. After he falls asleep, we put him down and within 5 minutes he is awake again. Pick him up, snuggle, and he goes back to sleep. It is all so sweet that he responds to us, but not at midnight, 2 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM, 5 AM, and 6AM.

Because this little man is so carnal, we have tried co-sleeping a few times. The bad news is that he absolutely loves it and sleeps extremely well in our bed. His favorite is either on my chest or between us with my hand atop his head. However, when co-sleeping, neither parent gets any deep sleep. Between the fear of suffocating him and all the little noises he makes, it simply is not possible to drift completely away. This accords with my deep seated feelings that our bed is hallowed ground, not to be encroached upon. Yet, we need a solution. Tomorrow we might be searching online for a bassinet sized electric blanket.

So, if you wonder why there are so few pictures and posts, it is because one of us is preoccupied with a needy little baby. The other is caring for Kayla, making meals, buying groceries, and otherwise tending to the care of our home.

Top 10 list

Today’s “Top 10” list is the best ways to insure you have very attentive medical assistance.

• When your wife wakes you to inform you of labor pains, get up and start making cookies for the attending staff.

• Make sure the cookies give off a powerful and attractive aroma. I recommend peanut butter oatmeal cookie sandwiches. Empirical evidence suggests a high degree of effectiveness.

• Make sure they are fresh and warm upon arrival to maximize odor emanation.

• Give one (or two) to the Doctor just before he leaves your room. This will assure that nurses will see the cookie(s) and inquire of their origin.

• Make plenty of cookies. You’ll need enough to satiate the immediate attending staff and the “scavenger” staff who come strictly for the cookies.

• Plan ahead and have a list of “niceties” you can ask the scavenger staff to supply in exchange for cookies. You won’t think of this “in the moment” because there are too many other things to think about, so keep a list. Examples: parking tokens, WiFi access, a wheelchair for daddy to wheel himself around in for amusement, etc. Be creative! Once you have them in your room, the cookie odor is intoxicating and they will be quite motivated.

• Did I mention the need to make many cookies? The scavengers crumb trail will attract other hospital staff.

It’s a boy!

Due: Today.
Arrived: Today, 2:49PM.

7 pounds, 14 oz.
20.5 inchesl

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We are still hunting for a first name, something that suits a boy and begins with the letter L.

Unlike Kayla, who gave one cry upon arrival, Junior has been a fairly steady stream of small cries, squeaks, and chatter. It’s quite interesting, and one thing is certain; Junior is much more vigorous.